30 July 2016

South Street, Portslade

South Street as a name is a comparatively recent title.
The early censuses recorded the people as living in Portslade Village without
any indication as to whereabouts their dwelling was actually located. It is
therefore difficult to trace continuity of occupation except in a few cases
such as Alma Cottage and Robin’s Row.

In the Street Directories of 1889
and 1899 High Street is mentioned but South Street is absent. However, South
Street is present in the 1910 Directory. Today South Street continues to the
junction with Drove Road but in the nineteenth century the part by the Brewery
was called Frederic Terrace.

In 1974 South Street became part
of Portslade Old Village Conservation Area.

It is amazing this old house has
survived until modern times because it buts out at an awkward angle, leaving a
very narrow pavement. Its nearest neighbour on the west side used to be an old
barn but as this structure protruded even more than Alma Cottage did, it had to
go in the interests of road safety.

Alma Cottage was most probably
built in the mid-1850s and named after the Battle of Alma fought on 20
September 1854, it being the first battle of the Crimean War where the British
and French were victorious.

|It may have been built for the
Peters family, of which numerous members lived in Portslade. In 1861 the
occupants of Alma Cottage were as follows:

Abraham Peters, 41-year old
market gardener

His wife Harriet aged 39 and
their children,
all Portslade-born

Harriet, 16

Henry, 13

Selena, 11

Ann, 9

Esther, 7

Emma, 5

Emily, 3

Abraham, 1

Tom was a later addition to the
family and in 1886 it was recorded that nine children born to Abraham and
Harriet Peters were all alive; this is an excellent record for Victorian times
when high infant mortality was a sad fact of life.

William Peters was landlord of
the Bull Inn (later re-named Stag’s Head)

Charlotte Peters owned 10 acres
of arable land south of the village.

Tom Peters, son of Abraham and
Harriet, was born in 1866 in Alma Cottage. By 1906 he was landlord of Sussex
Arms, Fishersgate, and had two pretty daughters named Florence aged 22 and
17-year old May. On Saturday 3 February 1906 they went on a sailing boat trip
with two young men named Emery and Scholfield. They were returning home and
were within a stone’s throw of their father’s house when a sudden gust of wind
caught the sail and the boat capsized.

Scolfield saved his own skin by swimming for the shore.
But Emery was made of sterner stuff and tried his best to save the struggling
sisters. He held both of them up for some time but just as the rescue boat was
nearing them, the girls released their hold on Emery and sank; no doubt their
struggles and the bitter cold exhausted them. The rescue party managed to
locate May and artificial respiration was applied for two hours but with no
success. Florrie’s body was not found until the following day. The funeral was
held at St Andrew’s Church, Portslade.

By 1871 the Peters family no longer lived at Alma Cottage;
instead John King, surveyor, and his wife occupied the premises. It seems
highly probable that this man was the same John King who was brother to Miss
Alice King, faithful companion to wealthy Hannah Brackenbury of Adelaide Crescent. While Alice was a
gentle soul, her brother was rather a grasping individual. When Hannah
Brackenbury died in 1873, John King caused her trustees no end of trouble with
his demands. Miss Brackenbury empowered her trustees to purchase a house for
Miss King, which was named Sellaby House in honour of Hannah Brackenbury whose
family came from Selaby in Yorkshire. The house is still there in Old Shoreham
Road. When Alice King moved into the premises, her brother lost no time in
joining her there.

John King no longer needed Alma Cottage and by 1881 there
were different occupants. They were Alexander Atkinson, aged 42, his wife
Louisa, aged 40, and their children Alexander 5, William 4, Edward 3, and
two-year old Louisa. The census recorded that he had no occupation and so he
must have been a gentleman of means.

By 1889 it seems that Walter Mews owned Alma Cottage.
Walter Mews and his brother Herbert ran Portslade Brewery, built themselves
substantial properties, namely Whychcote and Loxdale, and owned other pieces of
land in Portslade too.

In the 1920s Mr G. Leroy lived in Alma Cottage, followed
in the 1930s by a man with a delightful name – Noah Higgs.

From 1954 to 1974 John Mussell, monumental mason and
sculptor, occupied Alma Cottage and created ‘Memorials of Distinction in
Marble, Granite and Stone’. He exhibited a tasteful row of tombstones along the
outside of the west wall.

In 1986 Alma Cottage was sold for £59,995.

But house prices were rising and in February 2003 Alma
Cottage was up for sale and Mishon Mackay were inviting offers in the region of
£285,000. The house was described as a spacious cottage with three reception
rooms and three bedrooms. Moreover, there was a large enough space for three
cars to be parked.

Barn

The barn was situated to the west of Alma Cottage and
belonged to Portslade Farm whose farmhouse next to Robin’s Row, is still
standing.

It was once described as a Tithe
Barn. This term dated back to the time when villagers were expected to maintain
their parish priest. People gave the vicar a small part (a tithe) of all farm
produce ranging from eggs to wool. It was not until the mid-19th
century that this payment in kind was abolished and cash payments substituted.

It would be interesting to know
whether or not the barn on this site was the one referred to by Revd John
Postlewhite, vicar of Portslade, when he reported in November 1606 that the
‘vicaridge Barne is blowne down’.

In 1923 the barn was described as
being built of flint and brick and had a thatched roof.

Greenfields, the removal firm,
later used the barn for storage purposes.

The barn was removed in the early
1960s and before 1964.

Iron Mission Hall

Its stay was of short duration and it was placed in South
Street on the north side of the barn; it was known as the Upper Portslade
Mission Hall. It came originally from Trafalgar Road where it had been in use
since 1890. But when the congregation had collected together enough money to
build a more substantial building, it was no longer needed. The new structure
was opened in 1907 and was later known as Southern Cross Evangelical Church.

But the hall’s travels were not
over yet. In 1909 it was dismantled in South Street and re-erected in St
Aubyn’s Road where it became the Fishersgate Mission.

The house was built in the 1860s on a site once part of
Ten Acres Field situated on the south side of South Street. It was named after
a former tenant of the land called John Lindfield.

Portslade Manor Court Books mention
a John Lindfield, gentleman, of Horsham, a customary tenant of Portslade Manor,
and who owned land called Gatford’s and Ayre’s in 1716. When John Lindfield
died, his widow Elizabeth was entitled to the right of widow’s bench; this was
an old legal term meaning she could enjoy continuing to live at the property
for the rest of her life.

In 1871 Thomas Mortimer,
solicitor, his wife Fanny, and their numerous children occupied Lindfield
House.

But by 1878 William Dudney
(1831-1896) was in residence. He had been born in Woodmancote and he was the
son of John Dudney who founded Portslade Brewery. In the 1850s William Dudney
married Fanny, daughter of Henry Hudson, who had been farm bailiff to landowner
Hugh Fuller. When Fuller died in 1858 he left land, valuables and property to
his ‘chief and good servant Henry Hudson’.

John and Fanny’s eldest son was
born in 1856 but he died before he was three years old and was buried in the
churchyard of St Nicolas. Happily, six more children were born to the couple
and there were two sons and four daughters.

The 1881 census recorded the
Dudney family living in Lindfield House as follows:

William Dudney, aged 49, brewer

His wife Fanny, aged 49

Mary Maria, aged 23

William Hudson, aged 21

Sarah Jane, aged 19

Fanny Elizabeth, aged 17

Arthur Hudson, aged 14

Edith Ellen, aged 10.

There was also a niece staying
with them and two servants.

It seems the children were not of
the marrying kind because a decade later the household still contained six
unmarried young people.

The Dudney family were staunch supporters
of St Nicolas Church and between them supplied a churchwarden, two Sunday
School teachers and four district visitors. Meanwhile Lindfield House played
host to mothers’ meetings, a library and a coal club.

William Dudney suffered from
Bright’s disease in his later years and he died in Lindfield House on 6
February 1896. He was buried in Portslade Cemetery where there is a large
Dudney family burial plot south-west of the chapel. Also buried there were his
wife and four of the children. In March 1896 Mrs Dudney wrote to Portslade
Council thanking them for sending their condolences on the loss of her husband.
By 1900 Mrs Dudney decided to move away from Portslade and appropriately enough
she went to Lindfield.

In 1902 Alfred Earl purchased
Lindfield House and in the same year he received planning permission to erect a
coach-house and stables. He and his wife continued to live in the house until
he died in around 1926. His widow stayed on for a couple of years but by 1930
Arthur Tyson was in residence.

It seems that Mrs Tyson was less
than delighted when in 1932 the field next door was made into a recreation
ground now known as the Village Green. She fired off letters of complaint about
noisy children to Portslade Council; there were two in 1933 and another the
following year.

Arthur Tyson must have died
sometime during the Second World War but his widow continued to live in
Lindfield House until 1957 when she sold the property to the Baptist Church for
£3,400.

The Baptist minister lived in
Lindfield House while the new Baptist Church was being built and in 1961
Lindfield House was demolished.

The original Portslade Baptist congregation was based
around an imposing edifice with twin towers in North Street, Portslade. This
area was once even more densely populated than it is today but by the 1950s new
housing was being erected in Upper Portslade and Mile Oak and it seemed
sensible to move north. It is perhaps ironic that they were moving north from
North Street to new quarters in South Street. In 1957 Lindfield House was
purchased for £3,400. The house came with grounds covering three-quarters of an
acre. This was very useful because it meant that while the church was being
built, the minister could live in comfort in Lindfield House. Their previous
manse in Leicester Villas, Hove was sold for £2,900. Lindfield House was also
used for Sunday School while Youth Club services were held at Easthill House.
The new manse built behind the church was dedicated on 26 January 1961.

Meanwhile, the foundation stone of the church was laid on
16 July 1960. The opening ceremony was held on 26 January 1961. The architect
of the new church, Mr B.A.P. Winton-Lewis, handed the keys to Sir Herbert Janes
(ex-president of the Baptist Union). Revd A.E. Johnson, the minister at
Portslade from 1929 to 1934, unveiled a plaque in the entrance hall inscribed
with a list of the ministers of the previous church in North Street. Mr C.F.
Goodwin (honorary treasurer) unveiled another plaque that recorded the history
of the Baptist church in Portslade from its small beginning in 1870. Revd E.G.
Rudman of Holland Road Baptist Church presided over the service. The church was
packed and the service had to be relayed to those standing outside.

Builders A. Alldritt erected the church and the total cost
of the site, manse and church came to £22,190. Remarkably, almost half of that
amount had been raised before the church was opened and the balance was cleared
by 25 September 1979. In recent years the whole roof plus its rafters have had
to be replaced.

The church is a dual-use building and can be used for
church activities other than worship. But the large wooden cross, suspended in
front of blue velvet curtains, reminds all that this is a dedicated building.
During the 1960s and 1970s there were flourishing groups of Boys’ Brigade and
Girls’ Brigade. They were expected to behave themselves properly on Church
Parade Sundays. The Boys’ Brigade leader ensured good behaviour by marching up
and down the rows of seats, swagger stick tucked under his arm, keeping an eye
on things.

In the 1990s Brighton & Hove Scrabble Club held weekly
sessions at the hall.

The grounds used to include a hard tennis court situated
behind the church on the south-west side. Local people were able to hire it and
one regular was Jeff who used to run the newsagent’s in South Street. In 1985
the land was used to build a block of tasteful brick-built flats called
appropriately enough, Lindfield. It was the Baptist’s Men’s Movement that was
behind this development for senior citizens. English Churches Housing now runs
it.

In the early hours of Tuesday 18 July 2000 a car went off
the road on Lock’s Hill, ran across the Village Green and demolished a large
section of wall between the green and the church. The car blocked the driveway
and car park and shattered a church window. It was estimated that the cost of
the damage would run into thousands of pounds. Revd Philip Cook and Councillor
Bob Carden thought there should be a proper crash barrier around the green to
prevent this sort of thing happening again.

Pastors

1961-1974 Revd E.C.K. Starling

1974-1979 Revd R. Webber

1980-1986 Revd Gordon Steer

1988-1994 Revd C. Weller served as a Moderator because
there was no resident minister

Deeds for the middle cottage
reveal that under the will of William Cheesman, miller, dated 1 December 1785,
the property was left to his daughter Susannah Peters. In 1866 John Dudney gave
the cottage to Ellen Dudney while in 1877 William Fraser sold it to William
Brazier for £250.

At the south end of the terrace
there was once a small beer shop named Olive Branch.

In 1881 three families occupied
the cottages as follows:

Henry Gates, coal merchant, his
wife, two daughters and two sons

Henry Attree, police constable,
his wife, one daughter and two sons

Henry Hills, drayman, his wife
and two young lodgers

By 1889 F. Peters, tobacconist,
occupied the northern-most cottage. It is fascinating to note that in 2016 the
same premises are still in use for the sale of tobacco and cigarettes, besides
being a mini-store, a newsagent and the village Post Office since late 2015.
Today the shop is numbered at 28 South Street and is called Rishi News. The bus
stop was situated outside this shop from March 1957 to March 2001.

This terrace of five properties
was built at an angle to Robin’s Row. Indeed the two terraces are incredibly
close together but it does preserve the evidence of how people in Portslade
Village were once crowded together. There were courts of small cottages at the
eastern end of High Street and through a twitten at the back of the George Inn, all
long gone.The rather charming name of Myrtle Cottages has gone out of
use but they remained as domestic dwellings until the 1930s.

Number 1 – This was the
first cottage to be converted to commercial use. In 1934 Mrs Edith Sherlock ran
a general store here but by 1938 she had decided to specialise in
confectionary.

In 1951 Lewis James Virgo, boot
repairer, occupied the premises.

In 1952 Roy Perry purchased the
shop and he ran a business called Truframes where he made lampshades by hand.
Silk was used and mounted on a wire base with a copper lacquer to prevent
staining. The lampshades were made to suit the customer’s requirements and
could be elaborate with trimmings and bobbles or quite plain. Mr Perry had
served a seven-year apprenticeship in Hove learning his craft. In 1961 he
decided to let the ground floor and moved his enterprise into what had been his
bedroom upstairs. You could often see him hard at work through the upstairs
window. He was able to produce 40,000 lampshades a year and by 1982 he had
notched up 30 years on the same site.

Meanwhile, Ladbroke’s opened a betting shop on the ground
floor. In the days before indoor cigarette smoking was banned, people walking
past received a blast of cigarette-laden air when the door was opened. By 1990
a computer firm occupied the upstairs part. In February 1990 a fire caused
extensive damage to the premises. A resident in Robin’s Row alerted the fire
brigade.

Number 3 – In 1938 Thomas
W. Smart had a small draper’s shop here but by 1939 Henry James Newman was
running a fried fish shop. The business eventually passed to his son Ted Newman
who ran it with his Canadian-born wife. When they decided to retire they moved
right away from Sussex. But they missed their old haunts and returned to live
in Shoreham. Sadly Ted Newman had only been back in the area for some three
months before he died.

On 20 March 1999 the business, now called the Rainbow Fish
Bar, was gutted by fire that might have been caused by an accumulation of fat
in the extractor fans or by the gas pilot jets. Two fire engines from Hove
arrived to tackle the blaze; traffic through the village was reduced to single
file while traffic coming down from Mile Oak was diverted. In addition there
was slight smoke damage to the properties on either side. After a lengthy
interval the shop was completely refurbished and re-opened as the Village Fish
Bar (Tasty Fries). Residents will remember the friendly Chinese man and his wife
who ran the business with their colourful Chinese calendars adorning the wall.
Today it is still in business as a fried fish shop, but under different
management, and it is called the Old Village Fish Bar.

Number 5 – It is
interesting to note that ever since the cottage was converted to commercial
use, it has been used as a hairdresser’s. It started off in 1938 with Mrs A.E.
Ayling.

In 1989 Donna Maria Ayling opened
her hair-dressing salon here.

Number 7 – The original
Post Office in Portslade was located in the High Street and it only moved into
these premises in the early 1950s. In 1951 Bennett & Grace, grocers, owned
the business and by 1954 the Post Office had been added. Later, Mr Grace ran it
and still presided over the grocery side of the business. Many residents will
remember his no-nonsense manner. For example, a polite request for a piece of
cheddar to be cut off an appetising-looking slab was refused on the grounds
that the cheddar already in use had to be finished first. Perhaps there were no
storage facilities to store such items out the back.

By 1998 Chris and Stella Jolliff
ran the business, which was officially known as the Upper Portslade Post
Office. In February 1998 Camelot, the National Lottery operators, presented the
Post Office with their Gold Award. It was stated that only 13% of the 35,000
retailers in the country who sold lottery tickets have won the award.

In around 2004 Mrs Charan Dhajan,
who lived in Worthing, purchased the business. Her mother, Mrs Balwani Saimbi,
was often to be seen about the place, helping out in the living quarters at the
back. At 9.20 a.m. on 17 October 2007 two armed robbers of Asian appearance
burst into the Post Office demanding cash. They attacked 76-year old Mrs
Saimbi, throwing a toaster at her and a metal chair, causing her to fall to the
ground screaming. Mrs Dhajan shouted at them to leave her mother alone. The
robbers were unable to unlock the safe but still managed to get their hands on
thousands of pounds in cash. They fled in a burgundy saloon car. A female
customer, also in her seventies, was hurt and treated at the scene. But Mrs
Saimbi was taken to hospital with concussion. Mr Malvika Patel, owner of Rishi
News, said ‘It’s unbelievable’.

By 2015 Mrs Dhajan had retired
and part of nearby Rishi News was converted in order that a Post Office counter
could be installed and the business incorporated with the running of the
mini-convenience store and newsagent.

Number 9 – Albert John
Kent and his wife opened a greengrocer’s in these premises in around 1938 and
remarkably their son John Kent was still running the shop in the early 1970s.
The shop was old-fashioned and basic and with no attempt at pretty displays of
produce with vegetables still languishing in cardboard boxes.

By around 1972 the shop was
called Marlens and the owners began to stock a wider range of goods.
Unfortunately, the business proved to be unviable and it was claimed it was
partly due to the fact that people preferred to shop at supermarkets. After the
shop closed, there was some talk about the place being turned into a picture
gallery of sorts, which residents thought a most unlikely idea. In the event,
the shop reverted to being a private residence.

This building stands at an angle to Robin’s Row. It is thought
that the premises also served as the village school until the Brackenbury Schools were built in Lock’s Hill in 1872. In fact in 1891 the building was
still referred to as the Old Schoolhouse.

Portslade Farm formed part of the
Portslade House estate and contained 87 acres and there was grazing for around
200 sheep. In the 1870s farmer John William Smith lived in the farmhouse.

But by around 1880 the Broomfield
family moved in. Martin Broomfield was born in 1839 at Cuckfield. In 1861 he
married Eliza West and they proved to be a prolific couple producing at least
nine children. The 1881 census recorded them at Portslade Farmhouse and Martin
Broomfield farmed 64 acres, employing five men and three boys. The rest of the
family was as follows:

In 1891 Martin and Eliza were
still in residence and the children at home were as follows:

Fanny, 26

Henry, 21

Roger, 19

Percy, 17

Ruth 15

Herbert, 10

The three eldest sons all worked
as gardeners. Martin had a younger brother John Broomfield who was also born in
Cuckfield and went on to farm at Mile Oak. By 1911 Martin Broomfield still
lived at Portslade in 1 Aldrington Cottages.

By 1896 the redoubtable Marianne
Stallabrass had taken over Portslade Farm Her advertisement proclaimed she was
a market gardener and florist, and she sold poultry, dairy-fed pork and
sausages, butter, new-laid eggs and milk. In addition there was good pasture
for horses requiring rest. Mrs Stallabrass had taken the unusual step of
leaving her husband together with their three children – a course of action not
undertaken lightly in Victorian times. Her business must have prospered because
not many years later she was installed in a spacious house called Hill Brow,
the site now occupied by part of Rowan Close. She died in 1908 at the age of
61.

In 1910 a solicitor by the name
of S.H. Sayers was living in the house but during the Great War the Army
occupied the premises.

Afterwards, it became a civilian
residence once more and in the 1920s farmer David Reed lived there.

In 1923 the farm was up for sale
and the particulars of Old Portslade Farmhouse were as follows:

The house was built of brick and
flint with cement and roughcast finish and a slate roof.

On the ground floor there was a
double-entrance hall with a stone floor.

The drawing room measured 16 feet
6 inches by 13 feet and had a bay window, a marble mantel and a tiled hearth

The morning room had wainscoting
around the walls

The dining room measured 16 feet
3 inches by 13 feet and had French windows

The kitchen measured 24 feet by
20 feet; there was a kitchener plus a sink, cupboards and a match-boarded store
room

There was an outside water closet

There were three bedrooms on the
first floor with the front bedroom measuring 16 feet 6 inches by 12 feet 9
inches and there was a bay window

There were a further two bedrooms
in a detached iron building measuring 24 feet by 12 feet 3 inches.

The farm buildings were as
follows:

A dairy built of brick and flint
with a slate roof

A stable with five stalls and a
loft over them

A brick-built and tiled cow stall
with three standings

A range of eleven pig pounds with
a boiling house

Two buildings with slate and
tiled roofs

A paddock

A small area of farmland
consisting of three acres and 38 poles

A liquid manure pump

According to Betty Figg, in the
1920s and 1930s there was a sunken lawn in front of the house on which croquet
was played; there was also a pond nearby.

Portslade Farm included Freeman’s
Court Cottages that stood on the south east side of Lock’s Hill; the cottages
were built in two terraces and one set remains to this day although now it is a
single residence and it has the name Freeman’s Cottage and the date 1798 above
the front door.

In November 1933 Mr G.W. Warr on
behalf of Mr F. Walker sought planning permission to develop the land but
Portslade Council turned it down.

Perhaps Mr Walker was frustrated
by his development plans coming to nothing. At any rate it seems the farmhouse
remained unoccupied for some time during the 1930s. But by 1938 A.E. Goodings
& Sons, electrical engineers, ran their business from there.

By 1947 Matthew Giles had
purchased the property. He came from a gypsy family but decided to put down
roots instead of travelling about. Mr Giles died in the 1970s and his funeral
was a big occasion for all his gypsy family and friends. In fact Portslade Old
Village came to a virtual standstill with traffic completely clogged up. There
was a great wealth of wreaths too. Mr Giles had a daughter called Bubbles and
she married Wally Harwood who became something of a village character. He
occupied the small iron building that used to house two bedrooms back in the
1920s. Later on the iron building became a dining room but when Mr Walker
wanted to turn it into a residence, Portslade Council had turned him down his
plans.

The cottages were built in around
1740 and the name Robin’s Row goes back as far as the 19th century
and certainly it was used in the 1841 census. If the name actually referred to
the five flint-built cottages still in existence, then in times past they must
have been extraordinarily overcrowded.

The 1841 census listed 33 names;
in 1851 there were no less than 38 names; in 1861 and 1871 there were 30 but by
1881 the number had gone down to twenty-two.

The majority of inhabitants
earned their living by labouring, either in general work, on farmland or in the
brick-fields. There was the occasional cord-wainer, carter, groom, or police
constable.

For instance, in 1841 John Brook,
Reuben Curtis, William Prevet, Allen Haide and George Aldridge were all
labourers while William Godley, George Godley (aged 13), John Lelliott and
Edward Butcher were agricultural labourers.

In 1851 Portslade-born Richard
Patching must have presided over a cramped household because it included his
wife, four sons, three daughters and a niece.

In 1881 blacksmith Walter Burgess
lodged in Robin’s Row; he worked at Foredown Forge in Foredown Road.

In 1895 under the will of Edward
Blaker, a great deal of land in Portslade plus five ‘substantial flint-built
and tiled cottages’ were put up for sale. Each cottage contained two rooms on
the ground floor, two bedrooms on the first floor and an attic. There was a brick
yard at the back and four outside privies used in common; water was laid on.
The tenants paid 3/2d a week, which produced an annual rental income of
£41-3-4d.

Robin’s Row was sold for £440. It
seems likely that Isaac Holland, landlord of the George in the village,
purchased the cottages. At any rate in 1901 he presented plans for new drains
for the cottages.

It is interesting to note that a
letter from residents of Robin’s Row dated 11 June 1938 was sent to Portslade
Council complaining about flooding. The flooding problem was to become a
recurring problem until recent times when new storm drains were installed and
storm overflow tanks installed under the adjacent car park eased the problem.
But even today a severe deluge can still cause trouble. For example, on 7 June
2016 Portslade Old Village was flooded and there was another episode of
flooding there in the same month too.

One resident who remembered
flooding well was Mrs Doo who lived at 5 Robin’s Row in the 1940s and 1950s.
She shared the cottage with her disabled son and once when she was out at work
during a time of heavy rain, he was found sitting in his chair marooned in the
middle of a flooded room. Mrs Doo had once managed a small sweet shop next to
the Theatre Royal in Brighton. But she somehow lost that job and had to take
domestic jobs to make ends meet.

There is an interesting tradition
concerning Robin’s Row with some old-timers believing the cottages once stood
on the banks of a stream and the terrace was therefore like a little quay. This
may be a folk memory of a winterbourne stream that ran down where Valley Road
is today and ended in a large pond north of the Old Shoreham Road.

On 22 September 1971 Robin’s Row
became Grade II listed buildings. This means the owners have to respect the
ancient dwellings by not, for example, installing windows with plastic frames.
The old way of opening some windows, also apparent in other old cottages in the
village, was sliding one window in front of another, rather than using sash
cords or opening outwards. You can see an example high up in the end cottage.

In 1985 when the end cottage
nearest South Street was up for sale, it was claimed that it had been a
foreman’s cottage because it was larger then the rest. There were original
tiles on the ground floor and evidence of a window being blocked up to avoid
paying window tax. The price was £32,500. By July 1999 the same cottage was on
sale for £92,950.

This building is the corner
property facing High Street but it is still numbered as being in South Street.

It used to belong to Portslade
Brewery and in September 1934 they wanted to turn it into a shop. Portslade
Council refused at first but later agreed to an amended plan and it became an
off-licence. In March 1938 the licence was transferred from E.C. Stanford to
F.G.Browne of Walton-on-Thames. It remained an off-licence with Queenie ruling
the roost until 1973 and after it closed Queenie took a job in the box-making
department of Le Carbone. The building must have been in a poor state because
it was carefully demolished in 1973 but then re-built in a similar style so
that the top storey looks identical to what was there before. An estate agent
by the name of Dodd moved into the premises and you can still see the initials
in the mosaic tiles in front of the door. There was also a solicitor in the
floor above to facilitate the legal side of house buying. When Dodd closed down
there was some interesting talk that the next business might be a takeaway
curry house. But there were some objections and the plan fell through.
Subsequently another estate agent Sinnott Green moved in. It is amusing to
recall that the sign-writer employed to emblazon the words ‘Sinnott Green
Independent Estate Agents’ used a letter ‘a’ in the word ‘independent’. Probably,
quite a few beady-eyed residents were quick to point out the error, which was
soon amended.